French billionaire becomes Vodafone’s largest shareholder with £4.4bn stake

The French telecoms mogul Xavier Niel and his partner, Delphine Arnault. Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The French telecoms mogul Xavier Niel and his partner, Delphine Arnault. Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images French billionaire becomes Vodafone’s largest shareholder with £4.4bn stake Xavier Niel buys 16% through investment vehicle Vega after Emirati telecoms group e& sells shareholding The French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel has become Vodafone’s largest shareholder after buying a 16% stake for £4.4bn. On Friday the Emirati telecoms group e&, which first took a stake worth £3.3bn in Vodafone in 2022 , announced the sale of its entire shareholding for 112.5p a share. Niel, who founded the telecoms company Iliad, has bought the stake through his family investment vehicle, Vega, at a 15% premium to Vodafone’s share price on Thursday. Niel said that Vega, which has been set up solely to house his stake in Vodafone, intends to be a long-term minority shareholder in the telecoms company. In recent years Vodafone has restructured its business – including selling its Italian and Spanish operations and its 50% stake in its Dutch joint venture – as well as merging with Three to create the UK’s largest mobile operator. Niel, who had previously sold the 2.5% stake he took in Vodafone through his investment vehicle Atlas Investissement in 2022, said Vodafone is now a “compelling investment opportunity”. “As a simpler, more focused business, Vodafone is ready for a new phase of growth and is well placed to unlock substantial untapped value across its European and African operations,” he said. “We are confident Vodafone can deliver sustainable growth and strong cashflow generation over the long term and – as an anchor investor based in Europe – we are ready to contribute our deep sector expertise and operational knowhow to its future success.” In May, Vodafone announced it would acquire CK Hutchison’s 49% stake in their VodafoneThree joint venture to take full control of the company. Niel, who has built telecoms businesses in France, Italy, Poland and Iceland, is estimated to be worth $15.5bn (£11.5bn) by Forbes. His partner of more than 15 years is Delphine Arnault, the daughter of France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, and an heiress to the vast luxury conglomerate LVMH that made her father a $150bn fortune. E& had one seat on Vodafone’s board, with the right to nominate a second if its shareholding ever exceeded 20%, but at this point Niel does not have representation. Carl Murdock-Smith, a telecoms analyst at Citi, said Niel has a record of being an active shareholder and could push for changes including job cuts. Months after taking a 19.8% stake for $1.3bn in Tele2 in 2024, which made him the Swedish telecoms company’s biggest shareholder, it announced it was cutting 15% of the workforce. skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion “We believe investors will look to what happened at Tele2 a